


Oh, say. Can you see?

by Kukla6



Series: Where Were You? [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 15:14:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1433131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kukla6/pseuds/Kukla6
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was Hawkeye doing while Natasha and Steve were on the run from S.H.E.I.L.D.?</p><p>Or, more accurately, what was he doing between The Avengers and Captain America 2?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, say. Can you see?

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier.  
> Mild spoilers, and only sort-of.
> 
> In this series I explore what the other Avengers were doing during the events in The Winter Soldier.

"So I take it that the mission didn't go well?" Natasha said, drily.  
"No. It did not go 'well'. Unless you mean that it fell INTO a well. With a creepy monster kid who can kill you with a video tape. It was that kind of 'well'."  
"You're the one who wanted active duty." The redhead unzipped her boot and started working it off of her foot. "I told you that you should take it easy for a while."  
Clint was tearing the remains of his flight suit off and stuffing the straps and fabric shreds into the incinerator chute. "Nothing in the mission brief suggested that there would be alligators."  
"You were in Florida."  
"We used to play Florida in the circus. I only ever saw a 'gator when we worked with the sideshow."  
"Piece of cake, is what you called it. Tropical vacation. I pointed out that the coordinates were right in the middle of the everglades."  
"I hadta get out of New York."  
In the middle of unzipping her other boot, Natasha paused.  
"Don't look at me like that."  
"I'm not looking at you."  
"I know, but you're doing that thing where you're listening extra hard. Stop it."  
She gave up on the zipper and looked up at him. "Ok, now I'm looking at you like this."  
"Yeah, it's not much better."  
"Was it New York you had to get away from? Or the Helicarrier? Or me?"  
Clint groaned. Why did it always go this way? "I wasn't trying to get away from you, Tash."  
"So the Helicarrier, then?"  
He sat on the edge of his bunk and put his head in his hands. "I kept running into repair teams. Weeks after I thought all the damage was fixed, I was still coming across tech crews rewiring something or reinforcing bulkheads..."  
He felt the bed shift and then her hand on his elbow. He waited for her to say something but she remained silent.  
"After the psych evaluation, I didn't feel like continuing to talk to the shrink."  
She leaned against him.  
"I mean, if it's a SHIELD shrink, what kind of client confidentiality do we really have?"  
She snorted.  
"I'm doing better. They cleared me for active duty, so I thought I would take a creampuff assignment and get back to work."  
"How many alligators?"  
"About two million."  
"So what, five?"  
"Three."  
"Little or big?"  
"About the size of a bus."  
"Or the Hulk."  
"Heh. Yeah. Hulk-gators. I was attacked by two million hulk-gators."  
"I wonder if the Hulk is part 'gator."  
"We could ask Dr. Banner."  
She snorted. "Yeah. You go ahead. I think he's still kind of pissed at me. Besides, he's working with Stark right now. They think they've got the Extremis thing licked."  
"Oh, yeah. I meant to look into that." He slid his arm behind her back. "What happened?"  
She shrugged. "There's a file on it. Stark handled it... in his usual way."  
"Flashy and weirdly unconventional?"  
"Something like that. They got Ms. Potts."  
"The Disney Character?"  
She shoved his arm. "No, you dork. Virginia Potts. CEO of Stark Industries. I worked for her as Natalie Rushman?"  
"The redhead?"  
She tossed her hair. "Strawberry blonde."  
"I thought you liked her."  
"I do. They didn't kill her; but they did infect her with the prototype Extremis. They hoped to motivate Stark. They did, but not the way they meant to."  
Clint thought carefully. "Didn't the Extremis project blow people up?"  
"That's why Stark called Banner in on it. And Dr. Ross." She smirked. "That one surprised me."  
Clint shook his head and got up, digging out a bottle of painkillers. "I don't keep track of all these people. No, don't worry about it. I don't need the drama. Just... is Stark all right?"  
She cocked her head to the side. "Does it matter to you?"  
"It kinda does, yeah. I was starting to take a shine to him. He's an asshole, but he's clever." He swallowed a couple of pills  
"I assumed that you felt threatened by him."  
"What?"  
"Clever Asshole. That's your department. He was horning in on your action."  
"Yeah, but if he takes on that role, I can be the dashing hero." He posed, giving her his Dashing Smile.  
She raised both eyebrows.  
"I can."  
Her expression did not change.  
"I could..."  
She rolled her eyes. "With Rogers on the field?"  
"Ok, maybe I can be the broody angsty guy then." He slouched forward and glared at her through his lashes.  
"I think Banner's got you beat there."  
"Super sneaky Ninja guy?"  
"How about I let you be the pretty princess and I'll be the Ninja."  
He flopped back on the bed. "Are we really getting the band back together? Ever?"  
She started wrestling with her boot again. "I really don't know. The Avengers Initiative was intended for level-10 threats or higher. Now that we've saved New York City..."  
"The world. We saved the world, Tash."  
"Fine, the world."  
"And that's just it; I liked the feel of that. None of this super secret mission spy business."  
"You like the super secret mission spy business."  
He rolled over. Did he?  
"Hey." She dropped her boot. "Hey? Where did you go?"  
"M'right here."  
"You ok?"  
"Tired. Sore."  
He felt her get up from the bunk. "Ok. I'll be right next door if you need me."  
He waved his hand at her but didn't get up. He was hoping the pain meds would kick in soon.  
Damn Natasha anyway. Now he was thinking. He remembered with beautiful clarity calling the shots as he saw them from the high-rise, letting Stark know about the weaknesses of the flying Chitauri, picking off enemies with carefully chosen shots, that one glorious moment when he fired at That Bastard's head with an exploding arrow... Good times. Clear boundaries, obvious bad guys who needed to be stopped, it was great.  
At the end, when they were all eating shwarma, it felt... like family dinner. Or rather, like he supposed that family dinner ought to be. Even after everything he'd done, the group had just accepted him as a team member.  
Covert ops used to be fun. Sneaking around, finding the target, getting out without being caught; this was his life.  
It's all That Bastard's fault.  
That Ass-Guardian Dickwad had twisted him into a perfect villain- no! Perfect Villain's Minion!  
Clint couldn't look at his missions anymore without feeling like an evil minion.  
And there it was.  
He'd looked for an assignment that might actually be fun. Something very different from the work he'd done as the mindless slave of an alien who dared to call himself a God.  
Nope.  
Nope.  
Need to think about something else.  
Gators.  
NOPE.  
Boobs. Well, that does help. He did get an eyeful at the beach while he was in Florida. He reminisced about the hot blonde in the neon bikini, despite the slightly chilly weather. She was chilly all right, and standing right up through the fabric of her top.  
Heh heh. Yeah. Boobs.  
Natasha has great boobs. She never wears bikinis any more, though. Not after that incident, though to be fair if she wore one no one would notice her cute little scar.  
Except him.  
Clint got up and started a shower. 

"Barton, what in the goddamn hell am I going to do with you?" Director Fury glared down at him.  
"Sir, it's fine. It's just a simple sprain. They don't even need to put a cast on it-"  
"In your debriefing, you reported no major injuries. Medical confirmed; just bruises and the wound in your leg." Fury tapped a nearby viewscreen, calling up his report.  
"Sir, I just... look. I took a couple of painkillers before I got in the shower..."  
"Are you trying to tell me that you sprained your left arm in the SHOWER? How is my best silent sniper going to hold a bow with that arm?"  
"I don't know." he mumbled.  
"You don't know."  
"No sir."  
"Barton, this is no time to be screwing around. I have assignments lined up for you, and now I have to find another operative to handle them."  
"Sir... I'm sorry, sir."  
Fury sat down and put his head in his hands. "Have they cleared you yet?"  
"I'm... No active duty, at least nothing with a bow." he made a face. He wouldn't be able to touch a bow for at least six weeks.  
The Director looked at him. "But you can still use a computer, right?"  
"What? I guess so..."  
Fury stood up and stormed over to him. "Then I'll just have to come up with some nice boring desk work for you to do in the mean time."  
As The Director strode purposefully from the room, Clint called after him weakly, "Sir? Is this a punishment, sir?"

It was a punishment. That much was clear. Fury was having him go over mission reports, looking for spelling errors, duplicate expense charges, continuity errors and other bullshit.  
Other than an occasional punctuation error, he didn't find anything to correct. He remembered the first and only time he himself had tried to fudge the expense reports and how much heat he'd drawn down on himself because of it. After that he was precise with his numbers.  
And it seemed that the other agents were as meticulous as he was.  
After a week, the boredom set in hard core. Numbers, words... the agents were numbered so he didn't even know whose missions he was proofreading.  
Finally something in him snapped and he started imagining the missions in his head while he worked. He put himself in every scenario, let the numbers and debrief-speak roll past him and instead experienced each mission as though it was his own.  
Which was fun.  
For a while.  
Until one mission gave him something like a flashback.  
That "evil minion" feeling returned, intensely. He re-read the report, looking for inconsistencies or errors, but couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness he picked up from it.  
He took it apart, piece by piece. The agent hadn't gone rogue. The agent hadn't even been creative with the parameters of the assignment. It was a textbook mission, beginning to end. In, out, no one the wiser. Data gathered, information submitted.  
He set it aside and took a break.  
After some sleep and a ridiculously caffeinated beverage, he ploughed through the next stack of missions.  
Sure enough, two more briefs gave him the creeps.  
He pulled out a blank USB drive and added all three mission reports into a folder.  
As he continued, he found more missions that resonated oddly with him. Any mission brief that made him think about That Bastard or made him feel like an evil minion when he put himself through the paces in his mind was copied to the folder on the USB drive.  
At the end of the day, he popped into The Director's office to check in.  
Fury was sitting at his desk, staring out the window.  
"Sir?"  
"What is it, Barton?"  
"I've been working on the files you sent me."  
"I should hope so, since you're on the clock while you're at that terminal."  
"Well, I thought about playing Duck Hunt instead, but the sprain's put me off my game."  
"Have you found anything to report?"  
He set the USB drive on the desk, quietly. "Not really."  
"As you were, then, agent."  
"Yes, sir."

Later on, at a discreet location, Fury asked again.  
"I looked at the data you submitted."  
"Yeah?"  
"I'm not sure what I'm looking at."  
"I'm not either. These were missions that seemed... off."  
"Everything in them is business as usual."  
"I know. But why were you having me go over these reports, anyway?"  
"I was hoping you might see something that I missed."  
"Yeah. So I put my Hawk Eyes on them, and those are the mission reports that had... a wrongness to them."  
"And what do you mean by that, agent?"  
"I wish I could be more precise. Is this off the record?"  
"About as off-the-record as I can manage."  
Clint took a deep breath. "When I was under the influence..."  
"Are you telling me you have memories of that experience?"  
"Not clear ones, but yeah."  
"Go on."  
"I was filled with a sense of purpose. His 'glorious' purpose, Sir, and it wasn't for the betterment of mankind. Something about these particular missions reminded me of that darker purpose."  
"I think I understand your meaning, Barton."  
"Do you want me to continue to filter through mission briefings, sir?"  
"No. I don't want this to come under anyone else's scrutiny. See me in the morning for a new assignment. Be prepared to whine and cajole me because correcting mission briefings is so very unfair."  
"Ah. Got it, sir."  
"I'm going to have to send you someplace unpleasant, but I need your eyes on something."  
"Sounds like fun, Sir."


End file.
